Cracking the Dream Code

CRACKING THE DREAM CODE

By Patti Allen

Course Introduction, Week 1:

Hello and welcome! I’m so glad you have decided to join me in this journey to begin Cracking the Dream Code! It is a journey to unravel the mysteries that your dreams offer up every night. Ultimately, it is the journey home to your true and authentic Self. If you have not had any luck in catching your dreams, don’t worry.

I will teach you everything you need to know to catch your dreams, decipher them and take their messages to heart. Here’s what you can look forward to:

Week One: Learn Dream Catching101, the 4 habits of highly effective dreamers and everything you need to know to get started.

Week Two: Explore the stages of sleep, while jumping into the many types and categories of dreams. Did I mention nightmares? Past lives? Sexual dreams?

Week Three: Adding tools to our dream toolbox. Let the messages begin!

Week Four: Dreams as story and common dream themes and symbols; Blinders and personal stumbling blocks. What keeps you in the dark?

Week Five: Old Age/New Age dreaming, dreams in the ancient world.

Week Six: Dreaming to the nth degree (no limits!) -Dream Incubation- Q&A for the Soul, creativity, and problem solving and the Body in Dreams.

Week Eight: Wellness and Bodies and Dream Groups, oh my!

A new lesson will be posted weekly together with exercises and practices that will help you integrate your new understanding of dreams into your daily life. You will need a journal, whether a simple spiral notebook or leather bound book, dedicated to your dream exploration. Implied in this notebook is your commitment to do the work of recording your dreams. This course will not offer you an online dream dictionary where you will be told, “this means that”! Instead, you will learn how to find your own meaning and messages in your dreams. The videos will add another dimension to your dream work, introducing you to a more integrative way of exploring your dreams with body, mind and spirit.

Let us begin!

Dreams Matter!

Whether you have been remembering your dreams for years, or you are curious but haven’t had any success in dream recall, if you have found your way here, then you likely would agree that your dreams matter! Beginnings can be difficult when they challenge us to do or learn something different. And for that very reason, beginnings can be quite powerful. We are given a chance to shift energy, change direction, learn and create. Learning how to understand dreams is actually less daunting than one might think. Dreams have been wrapped in

But the philosophy I hold when I teach is that we can learn from those who have expertise and experience in this “field of dreams,” as you will with me, but you, the dreamer, are the only expert on your dreams that matters. This is important to remember as you work your way through the course material and you begin

Cracking the Dream Code. Each one of you will have certain commonalities, but ultimately, your understanding from your dreams will come from deep within you.

I will give you the tools, but you must apply them to your own dreams and see what they mean for you. And when your mind isn’t sure, your body will help you clarify its meaning.

Dream Philosophy 101

Here’s the deal: People have been dreaming since the beginning of time and still the “experts” don’t agree on just what dreams are! So my philosophy is that dreams really do have meaning and you are the only expert that matters. When I help someone get the message from their recurring dreams, once they do, they find that those dreams stop! Clearly, this tells me that dreams have meaning. We will also approach our dreams as tools and technology for the soul so that means that dreams will not only tell you about your psychological issues but they will also show you what’s going on in your body as well as your spirit and all the things that are on your mind. The face you show the world is just the mask you wear, but you are so much more than that! You are a multi-dimensional being and your dreams will show you all of who you are. You may have out-of-body

Cracking the Dream Code 3 Copyright © 2011 by Patti Allen dreams, past-life dreams, visitations-from-the-dead dreams and precognitive material all come through the vehicle that we call “dreams”. You may have already had mysterious encounters with the unknown or unexplainable access to information that your conscious mind had no way of knowing. You may have had encounters with other spirits or purely subjective and symbolic dreams. Our philosophy encompasses it all. We do not consider dreams to be unreal, imaginary or made up, and our waking life to be “real”. We believe that all dreams are valid experiences that take place, whether we are awake or asleep and they all are “real” to our soul. From now on, please try to never utter the words, “It was only a dream”!

Holographic Dreamwork TM

This is my name for the kind of dreamwork we will be practicing and we take this phrase from the model of a hologram. “Holos” comes from the Greek, meaning

“whole” and our dream work follows that model. A hologram, besides being those cool pictures on your credit card, are actually three dimensional images where an object appears in all its three dimensional glory. If you were to divide a hologram in half (don’t try this at home) you would still see the whole within both halves.

For our purposes, it’s the metaphor that we are interested in; the whole is contained in each of the parts. In the dream work that you will learn, all of who you are, is in each and every dream and all of you will help your mind understand the dream’s messages.

To crack the dream code, we need to have some dreams to work with. Be patient with yourself, particularly if you’ve not recorded your dreams before. Successful and effective dreamers are first of all, dreamers who catch their dreams. It’s that simple! We all dream, every night from 3-5 dreams per night. This might be different for someone who has suffered brain damage, or for one who uses strong medicine, drugs or alcohol but for the average, healthy dreamer we have a bumper crop from which to draw every night. If you think you don’t dream, you really are simply not remembering your dreams. Here are four habits that you will need to take seriously (it doesn’t mean we won’t have fun) and cultivate.

1. Set the Stage: We need to set the stage for dreaming and the way we do

that is by setting up your bedroom for good energy and sweet dreams.

Whether you follow Feng Shui or not (I highly recommend Denise Linn’s

books “Sacred Space” and “Space Clearing A-Z”.) Make sure your

bedroom is clutter-free, clean and well aired out. This may seem obvious,

but it’s actually an aspect of dreaming that is often overlooked. We literally

have to make room for our dreams. It’s possible that the mess in your

bedroom isn’t yours. If your partner won’t join you in this process, then just

take responsibility for your side of the bed and your own mess. Once

you’ve done this, look to your nightstand. Your nightstand needs to have a

space for your journal and a pen (pens with lights built in to them are great

and can sometimes be found in medical supply stores.) You can also use

a digital recorder if waking a partner isn’t an issue. You might even set up

specifically religious, though they can be. They can be focused on beauty

or hold pictures of anything that feels uplifting, including things you want to

draw into your life. Mostly altars are a way of focusing intent. And our

beginning intent is to invite dreams in and to remember them!

2. Day Notes: Successful dreamers make sure they have all the information

they need in their dream journals. Before sleep, take a few moments to

write down the highlights of your day especially any emotional content.

You don’t need more than a few lines to summarize your day. Your

feelings will factor into your dream decoding so you need to make note of

them as well. (Example: “I fought with mom about her driving. I felt so

angry!”) This may feel unnecessary at first and your natural reaction may

be that you will remember your day. But what we are building is a context

for your dreams and over time, perhaps a few months or a year later, it will

be difficult to recall the details of your life on any given day. Most dreams

will be anchored in the details of our lives, at least on the psychological

level, so we need those day notes!

3. Waking up. First of all, don’t move! When you are asleep, your gross

motor movements are inhibited (except for sleep walkers), but the moment

you move as you leap out of bed in the morning, you pull yourselves out of

that delicate state and your memory of your dream will vanishes into thin

air. When you wake up, see if you can stay in that position for a moment.

Then by asking yourself, “What was I feeling?” or “Where was I just now?”

fish on a hook. Bit by bit the dream will come back to you or it may even

rush back all at once.

4. This brings us to the fourth effective habit: Dream Recall. Write down

whatever you remember. If all you can remember is “something about

work,” or “anxious” then write that down. Whatever seems to be on your

mind as you wake up, write that down in your journal. You may remember

a dream story but you may simply remember a feeling or a smell. Dreams

use all of our senses. This clue may trigger dream recall later or it may be

a small piece of a larger dream, but even if nothing happens with that tiny

fragment, you will be strengthening your dream recall ‘muscles’ and

getting in the remembering habit. The first time you may only remember a

vague feeling but with daily practice, over time, you will remember more.

Succeeding at dream recall is sometimes as simple as that. We are

building our dream recall muscles and for most of us that requires

practice. When it comes to capturing a dream, timing is important. Be sure

to write it down right away. Write it in shorthand if that helps, writing just

the key words. If you wait until you have showered and had your first cup

of coffee, it will be too late and the dream will be lost. Sometimes

something in your day may trigger the dream to come back to you but you

can’t count on that. If you are serious in your desire to remember your

dreams, you have to first develop good dream recall habits. Write the

dream when you get up and don’t wait until you have time later, because

a priority and you will be richly rewarded.

For parents of very young children, or those who have grandchildren in the

house, I am aware that there will be many days when these ‘simple’

instructions will not be so simple to carry out. If you have a spouse or

partner, this would be a good time to enlist their help and support.

Perhaps there will be some mornings that you will dedicate to dream recall

and your partner will deal with the morning rush hour. If your children are

older, then you can start your dream-catching together, each giving the

other some space in the morning. And even if your mornings don’t play out

in a dream-perfect scenario, keep the faith. If the dream is an important

one, you might remember it long enough to write it down.

Dream Dictionaries

For the eight weeks of this course, I invite you to let go of any and all dream dictionaries. The tendency is to want to get quick answers for the symbols that we don’t fully understand and let’s face it we all love to get quick answers to our questions. You will be building your own dictionary in this course and the reason for this is simple. If you and I both dream about dogs, for example, but you love dogs and I was bitten by one as a child, then when a dog shows up in our dreams, we will have two different feelings about dogs, with a whole host of

Cracking the Dream Code 8 Copyright © 2011 by Patti Allen different associations. At best, a good dream dictionary, might give you some ideas about where to start. However, you are here to learn to crack your own dream code and I want your own inner dream expert to emerge. The only exception to this rule is if you’d like to delve more deeply into any given symbol, instead of using a dream dictionary, buy a dictionary or encyclopedia of symbols.

These give you the cultural, historical, mythological and religious associations to any given symbol and are quite informative since many of these beliefs do find their way into our dreams.

For Next Week

This week all you have to do is follow these four habits of highly successful dreamers. 1) You will set the stage for dreaming as you literally make room for your dreams in your bedroom and in your life, 2) you will write your day notes before bed, 3) you will wake up gently, staying in the position you wake up in as you allow the dream or dream fragment to come back to your awareness and write down whatever you remember or was on your mind as you awaken. 4)

Write down the date and time of the dream as well and give your dream a title.

This will not only help you recall the dream at a glance, but is helpful in finding it and cross-referencing at a future date. A note about those middle of the night dreams: You will likely tell yourself that you don’t have to write it down because you will remember it. Well, quite simply, you won’t! Here’s a little shortcut. If you dream about driving down the highway with your best friend Sue, when a storm

Cracking the Dream Code 9 Copyright © 2011 by Patti Allen develops but you don’t want to write out all the details, simply write “driving, Sue, storm.” That will often be all you need to remember the whole dream when you get up. The best way to remember it, though, is to write it down, even if it’s 2:00 am! Generally, and conveniently, the dream you will most likely catch will be the last one of the morning. That’s it for this week my friends. I will see you in our private discussion group so feel free to post questions and dreams. Sweet dreams!